Rift Between Yugoslav President, Serbian Leader Deepens

The prime minister of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic will sever all cooperation with Yugoslavia’s president for not firing a general involved in an alleged U.S. spying affair, a senior official said Saturday.

The comments by Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic represent a further escalation in the rivalries between Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica.

Increased tensions between the two threaten to paralyze the workings of government at a time when Yugoslavia and Serbia need to show progress in democratic and economic development to enjoy continued Western support. Serbia is home to more than 90% of Yugoslav citizens and effectively sets Yugoslav policy.

Djindjic and Kostunica cooperated in ousting former President Slobodan Milosevic after he lost elections in late 2000 but have drifted apart since. Kostunica, a nationalist, opposed Milosevic’s extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, a move orchestrated by Djindjic as part of moving the country into the Western camp.

In comments to the Associated Press, Batic accused Kostunica of “protecting and cuddling Milosevic’s cronies,” an apparent reference to Gen. Aco Tomic, the head of Yugoslav army intelligence.

“There will be no more cooperation with Kostunica, because we cannot cooperate with someone who protects criminals,” Batic said, suggesting, without details, that Kostunica might be making himself criminally responsible by refusing to fire Tomic.

In the wake of the military’s arrest of a senior Serbian government figure March 14 who allegedly was spying for the United States, the Serbian government accused the general of contravening the law by failing to inform it of the case while reporting to Kostunica.

Earlier this past week in an interview in Belgrade’s daily Blic, Kostunica said that he would fire Tomic only if he “was sure that he breached existing rules and regulations.”

“However, everything points to the fact that this was not the case and that Gen. Tomic, [military] security and the Yugoslav army have acted according to the existing regulations,” he said.

Addressing supporters Saturday in Nis, about 125 miles south of Belgrade, the capital, Djindjic said he expected a “reshuffle of the army’s leadership” Monday.

He accused Tomic of eavesdropping on private meetings between himself and Kostunica. “In [a] number of occasions we were discussing national security, and Tomic was in the room next door,” he said.

The military says Momcilo Perisic, who resigned as Serbian deputy prime minister after he was released from detention March 16, was handing over top secret documents to a U.S. diplomat, John David Neighbor. Other Yugoslav officials have said the documents could have been used against Milosevic at his U.N. war crimes trial in The Hague.

In a breach of international conventions, Neighbor was held incommunicado for 15 hours--at times with a hood over his head--and reportedly beaten up. The United States protested his treatment.

Both the United States and Perisic--a former chief of the Yugoslav army’s general staff fired in 1998 for opposing Milosevic’s policies in Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo--have denied that any espionage took place.

Djindjic and his allies argued that Perisic’s arrest was aimed at undermining the Serbian government and meant to prevent possible arrests of more Serb war crimes suspects and their extradition to the war crimes court in The Hague.

The U.S. Congress has set a March 31 deadline for Yugoslav authorities to cooperate with the U.N. tribunal or forfeit financial aid.

Kostunica has continued to defy international demands to hand over about a dozen other suspects, including top officials of Milosevic’s fallen regime.